"The feeling of the place and the question of real haunt all the work of Philippe calandre. Professional photographer for the press essentially, he quickly seized the opportunity offered him a documentary first vocation to medium to play with the visible, the affect disorder and thus to initiate fictions generate narratives.
The various series that mark his artistic testament to the special interest he has the frame and architecture, a subject to him conducive to thoughtful questioning of the human adventure. If taken to resume formula Hölderlin, Man lives poetically, it is most often obliquely ...
In the Killer's Houses series, Philippe Calandre has blurred the landscape dwelling places serial killers to leave only the white contours; Stations in Gost, it does not fix the draw pigments images he made of abandoned gas stations, so that the images gradually disappear during exposure; In Blind presents a mind-blowing collection of blank walls;
In 2012, from his photographs of industrial sites, the architectural forms are dictated only by the logic of productivity, without aesthetic criteria - but, since inventories of Bernd and Hilla Becher, we can recognize their beauty - he the idea of ​​using photomontage to introduce the imagination (fiction factories)
Since his job is to compose images of chimeric and yet realistic landscapes that is drawing huge fragments in photoresist it has accumulated over time. "I decided to abolish the shooting, and the subject borrowed from real to finally give the illusion of an image which could in absolute tell what she wants even if the subject does not exist . "
The chilling splendor of the landscapes of Philippe Calandre is enhanced by the extreme precision he brings to the assembly of its images in which, besides the composition, everything is consistent, brightness, content shadows and gray fade perfection that lets show through any connection. The photographer and transports us into another world composed of fragments of reality, in a labyrinthine world in piranésienne complexity.
In a strange "paysonge" smelling the nightmare. In the remains of a disturbing dream.